The RNC's crime panic is an indictment of the Trump presidency

rnc crime
(Image credit: Photo Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)

On the fourth night of the Republican National Convention, crime got a great deal of attention. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani accused the current Democratic leadership of that city of turning it into a bloody dystopian hellscape. "Don't let Democrats do to America what they've done to New York," he said, warning against the "progressive Democrat approach to crime, which is to do nothing substantive to reduce it." Patrick Lynch, head of the New York Police Benevolent Association, endorsed Trump because of a looming "public safety disaster."

This is hysterical fearmongering. First, as Jon Hilsenrath writes at the Wall Street Journal, in 2020 murders are up quite a lot in some cities like Austin and Chicago, but only moderately in Los Angeles and Charlotte, and were actually down in San Jose. Overall crimes are down compared to last year, and even murder victims are still far below where they were 20-30 years ago. Indeed, this year the rate of homicides in New York is considerably less than it was in the last year of Giuliani's mayoralty.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.